Month: April 2008

tomorrow, it’ll be May and that means bike to work (BTW) month–whoo-hoo!

in celebration of bikes, and commuting, and springtime, and all things right and good in this world (getting a little carried away i guess), we’re taking part in some cool events.

Monday, May 12th, 7-9 am: P2P will be in riverfront park near the carousel helping to fix bikes for BTW commuters. there will also be a pancake breakfast, so come get some fuel, and then ride to work.

Wednesday, May 14th, 7pm: REI will be host a ffree showing of Ayamye,the Village Bicycle Project’s powerful documentary about their efforts to bring affordable,reliable transportation to people in ghana, africa. David Peckham will be there to answer questions and discuss his experiences in ghana. please come to the showing upstairs in the clinic room. 1125 N Monroe.

Wednesday, May 14th, 6:30-8:30pm: we will be collecting bikes for the Village Bicycle Project, if you have an old bike collecting dust somewhere, please bring it REI on May 14th so it can go to a good home. we’re only accepting adult bikes in repairable condition. here’s some info on acceptable bikes.

The P2P mobile bike shop was at AM Cannon on Saturday for the West Central Neighbor Days doing Free Bike Tune-Ups. I wasn’t there, but it sounded like a success. We fixed up about 40 bikes and even got a few donations.

On Saturday, our superhero volunteer Ken masterminded a garage sale. I doubted him. I shall never doubt again. We started with about 20 bikes: all of them single speeds or 3-speeds. Over the last couple weeks our volunteers have been learning how to clean and repack bearings on these bikes. Therefore, most of the adult bikes had fresh bottom brackets, hubs, and headsets. Our garage sale opened at 10 am. By 10:30, all but 3 or 4 of the bikes were gone. Crazy.

(photos: Superhero)

Sunday, we had the Paris-Roubaix celebration. It was crazy wonderful. We absolutely packed Benniditos to the gills. There were many bikes and many bike people. It was really great. I also got to have my first beer since New Year’s Eve. That was really great too.

Klay took some nice pics and posted them here. She also posted some of Micheal Conely’s pics here.

(crappy phone photos: John)

I don’t know what we ended up raising for the Paris-Roubaix thing yet, but between the two, I think we’ll come out with a good chunk of change.

This will go straight to our 501(c)(3) fund. In fact, Liza officially registered P2P’s articles of incorporation with the State of WA today. Next step: hand over our huge pile of 1023 paperwork to our lawyers. If all goes well we should have it off to the IRS by mid-May.

When: Sat, April 19th Time: from 10 am to 2 PM Where: at our donated garage space on the south hill. The detached garage is located in the alley behind the house at 4218 S Garfield.

PLEASE – Don’t go knocking on the door of the house. Go through the alley between Scott and Garfield: this is a donated space. We don’t want to disturb the owners of the house.

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We have a bunch of vintage single speed, 3-speed, and kid bikes (think ape-hangers and banana seats) that we need to clear out. None of these are super sweet collectors, but they’re great for tooling around the neighborhood and cruising the Centennial Trail.

On many of the adult bikes, and a few of the kid bikes, we’ve cleaned and repacked the bottom brackets, headsets, and hubs.

All bikes sold as-is.

Our goal is to get you riding, so we’re selling these cheap: $5-$40. And half-price on most at 1pm. All offers considered. Cash only.

pedals2people will do a short presentation at REI this sunday at 12: your basic slide show in power point format. don’t worry. i’ll keep it short and sweet. i’ll give some dates for our upcoming events, like the P2P annual yard sale where we’ll be selling some surplus parts and bikes. i’ll also have patches for sale. they’re pretty cool.

REI will host a ride at 11am through Riverfront and down the trail, and there are lots of other presentations scheduled for this sunday’s Cycle Fest.

if you’re on your bike cruising around in the predicted 65 degree weather (wow!), stop by for a free bike check-up.

While we’re not big race fans, the idea of Paris-Roubaix has always had a draw: it’s a one-day race along the cobblestone back roads of France. It’s a brutal race. Something like 135 cyclists started the race last year and around 40 ended up finishing. It’s often muddy, lots of flat tires, and the finish is always exciting.

Chris, up at Benniditos, has agreed to show this race for us on his fancy new big TVs on April 20th, when the race airs.

The idea is to get as many people on bikes to Benniditos as we can. The pizza, beer, and race is a generic draw to get cyclist there. But really, we’re looking forward to hanging out with the wide variety of bike folks that we run into. Think of it as a Bike Summit.

There’s no cover charge or any fee. Just order lots of beer and pizza and if Chris does well, he’ll donate a chunk to P2P.

You are encouraged to gather your friends and take a ride along some cobble stone (from downtown, take Jefferson,then Adams up the south hill to meet this requirement) and be at Benniditos by 1PM.

When that’s done,go home and take a nap, or save some energy for the monthly FBC ride, which is also happening on April 20th.